Live From Sundance: Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and Will Forte

The men behind the Adult Swim cult classic, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! , are bringing their so-called anti-humor to Sundance this year with the big-screen spin-off, Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie. The story is simple enough: Tim and Eric (delusional buffoons) squander a billion dollars making their first movie and to pay back their investor, they take a job running an abandoned shopping mall. But it's the details that are absurd. For example, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Zach Galifianakis, and Will Forte all make cameos. So does a rabid wolf. Here, Tim Heidecker, Eric Wareheim, and SNL alum Will Forte attempt to explain.

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GQ: Some of the sketches on the Awesome Show are as short as 15 seconds. Were you worried about stretching the material to a 90-minute film?

** Tim Heidecker: **We knew we didn't want to make a long version of the TV show because the pacing wouldn't stand for 90 minutes. You'd get so exhausted. We just realized we had to use some different muscles.

**Eric Wareheim: **We made a bunch of short films for Funny or Die Presents on HBO that had really simple stories. We felt pretty good about taking that and expanding it out, but still retaining some of the Awesome Show wackiness.

GQ: This is a pretty graphic movie. It's too hard to explain why, but there's a grossly funny scene in which Eric gets in a bathtub while a bunch of kids sit on the edge and have diarrhea on him. Where did that come from?

** Eric Wareheim: **Every season on the Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! every season we do a really gross brown joke. We try to outdo each other. The idea that these children were forced to hold it inside is the grossest, brownest thing we could possibly think of.

GQ: These kids have parents. Did you have to tell them what they were signing up for?

** Eric Wareheim: **Yeah, their parents had to sign off on it. They were all really cool about it.

GQ: When you saw Bridesmaids, did you worry that their diarrhea scene might eclipse yours?

** Eric Wareheim: **The idea of diarrhea has been around for ages.

GQ: There's some incredibly awkward humor in this film. There's a scene where Tim and Eric are in bed together, and Eric is quietly trying to masturbate. Did you worry that was pushing it too far?

** Will Forte: **That's maybe too far. People don't want to see what we do in our normal life.

**Eric Wareheim: **[laughing] This experience actually happened to me in college. I slept on a rickety bunk bed and the guy on top would masturbate and the whole thing would shake and I would just ride it out.

** Will Forte: **I was joking. I had no idea that came from your life.

** Eric Wareheim: **Yeah. It happened three or four times. After the third time I'd be like, "Hey!" Just to let him know I'm awake through this thing.

** Tim Heidecker: **I can masturbate without touching myself so it's never been a problem for me. I can do it pretty much standing right next to you. I don't touch myself. I don't produce liquid. So it's really easy.

** Will Forte: **Your semen evaporates through your skin?

** Tim Heidecker: **Yeah. It comes out in a dry poof.

GQ: Wow. Um, Will, how did you get involved in this film?

** Will Forte: **I met Tim and Eric a long time ago while making The Brothers Solomon. Bob Odenkirk brought them to the set. A couples of weeks later they asked me if I wanted to do something on Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

** Tim Heidecker: **[exhales] Just pick the one you're in! We know you want to.

GQ: Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie will be available through Video on Demand later this month, before it's released in theaters. Do you have a preference for where people see it?

** Tim Heidecker: **We definitely want people to see it in theaters if they're able to. We made this movie to be seen with a bunch of people. But the truth is, it's just not going to be in theaters in a lot of places. So if you're not living in New York or Chicago or other bigger cities, do it On Demand, but make it a night. Don't just put it on while you're getting ready for work in the morning. Make it a party.

GQ: There's a lot of comedy moving online. Louis C.K. released his last stand-up film online himself, selling downloads for $5 bucks. Is that the future?

** Tim Heidecker: **It's a little scary to think about that. Louis's situation worked out pretty well for him. But you know he really was just a guy standing on a stage with a microphone. We still need people to pay for these ideas. We hope there will still be people out there investing money in crazy ideas.

GQ: You two started making short films in college together at Temple University, long before the birth of FlipCams and iPhones. Are kids today spoiled?

** Eric Wareheim: **The technology is way cheaper. When Tim and I were in college we would go to Sears and buy a video camera on a credit card. We'd ask what the return policy was. They said it was a 60-day return policy. And we'd return that camera in 59 days with thousands of hours logged and recorded. Now they make it really easy. But it makes for a lot more crap on the internet.

**Tim Heidecker: **It's not like the money was prohibiting all these great artists from expressing themselves. It just created the ability for a lot of untalented people to try to make stuff.

GQ: Billion Dollar Movie opens with a Johnny Depp impersonator. Did you actually try to get Johnny Depp?

** Tim Heidecker: **We really went to some big names for that part, and were turned down all over the place by your Tom Cruises. We went really big. Triple A. And we just discovered the limits of our abilities.

GQ: Did you really think you had a shot at Tom Cruise?

** Tim Heidecker: **I thought that we had a good possibility. This movie is being co-produced by Funny or Die and Adam McKay and Will Ferrell. We thought, "Come on guys, get your Rolodex out and deliver." But you know, I think the idea that it's a Johnny Depp impersonator is way funnier anyway. It forced us to be creative.

GQ: Switching gears, are you guys still working on a project with Tommy Wiseau from The Room?

** Tim Heidecker: **No, we're not working with him at the moment.

GQ: What happened?

** Tim Heidecker: **We tried to produce his sitcom, The Neighbors, which is one of the great unseen projects that you need to know someone to see. And we couldn't get it to work. We couldn't get it to happen.

GQ: You mean you couldn't sell it?

** Tim Heidecker: **Tommy wanted more help to make it and we wanted him to do what he does in a vacuum without any assistance from professionals. We wanted him to make the show without being influenced by anybody that's ever made a show before. And there was sort of an impasse there.

GQ: But that's what made The Room so ridiculously great. Everyone always says it feels like a movie made by someone who'd never seen a movie.

** Tim Heidecker: **He really wanted to make something like Friends—a really broad sitcom. So he realized that he needed somebody who knew how to do that and we said, "No, we'll sort of be the middle man and help with the business end of getting the show made. But we're not going to help you write it or edit it or shoot it. That has to come from you, Tommmy."

**Eric Wareheim: **He refused to budge.

GQ: Have you guys been to Sundance before?

** Eric Wareheim: **We were there last year with a short film called The Terrys.

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